


muscle memory

by pyrrhlc



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Flashbacks, POV Magnus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 19:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12327309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/pseuds/pyrrhlc
Summary: I do not believe we shall ever seehow old age looks on you—You are breaking my heart.In which Magnus learns how to protect both himself and others. Inspired bythis post.





	muscle memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talefeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/gifts).



**i.**

It’s what he’s used to; fighting, losing, dying. It’s what Magnus wants. The one thing he is still capable of, cycle after cycle after cycle. The feeling of it doesn’t go away, even when everything – when everyone – is forgotten. Taako. Lup. Merle. Lucretia, Davenport, Barry. Those names mean nothing to him now. But the feeling remains. An urge to fight. A need to win, no matter what the cost. He has come back from death so many times – what is one more, here, in this moment?

He has to protect. It’s what he was born to do.

 

**ii.**

Magnus has forgotten what it means to ask for help.

Valiance is golden. Magnus knows this. He knows it and he lives it and he enjoys it, enjoys that sense of recklessness, a liquor of pure courage. It manifests as stupidity, occasionally – the risks don’t mean that much until he realises _here_ , _here I am, one man with one life, so why does it feel like so much more than that?_ He mistakes longevity for infinity and laughs when they tell him he won’t live another year. He already knows what’s coming for him.

 

**iii.**

Sometimes, Magnus feels as if he has lived for a hundred years.

He forgets, sometimes, to treat his body as he should. With care and with courtesy. He is a fighter, a ruffian by nature. The blows his bones receive are no form of kindness – the jolts and shoves he endures are in no way gracious or sentimental. He is a machine, and he will fight like a machine, like the weapon he is, the weapon with no origin, no history, no beginning.

Julia asks him, one day, where he learned to fight, and Magnus finds he cannot answer. The fractured shadows of his memories are so easy to forget in such turbulent times; looking over at her, clad in hauberk and gethre, primed and ready for the fight ahead, he finds the edges of his mind brushing up against a familiar feeling, a well-known void of incompleteness. If only he could reach out and touch it…

He reaches out to Julia instead, well-worn fingers intertwined with hers. Like two pieces of the same puzzle, fitting together with absolution and completion. The static fades. Julia smiles. Magnus finds himself feeling young again.

 

**iv.**

Red-brown dust shields the skyline. Magnus lifts a hand to his face, the heat of the blaze almost overpowering as he urges the horse beneath him forwards, forwards, the hills and fields rushing past him, green blurring into bronze blurring into stark, stark scarlet. The horse rears and bucks as the cinders fly forward, ash floating across his vision like lost birds. He dismounts quickly, running forth, but there is nothing to be done. There is nothing to be done and the world is striking sparks from his body as he stands there, and falls there, kneeling in the ruins of Raven’s Roost, every house, every business, every livelihood gone, gone, gone. Gilded flames rise up far above his head, but there is nothing beautiful about them. They have consumed a sanctuary and they know it, know it like the snakes they are, like the beasts Kalen commanded them to be.

Magnus presses his hands to the soil beneath him, empty and infertile, and knows it too; fire is such a dangerous thing. He leans back and takes off his wedding ring, eyes streaming as he looks through the ruins, through the smoke, through his tears, and knows the truth more bitterly than he has ever known anything. He slips the ring back onto his finger and holds his hand to his chest, burying his fingers between folds of clothing, coarse fingernails scraping at the underside of his wrist, desperate to wake up, to feel no pain and realise that this, all of it, is no more than a dream. But the pain does come. And when it does, it comes in waves.

He stands up, looking back at the horse beyond, so very afraid of the heat, and the ash, and him. Magnus walks back towards it, his footsteps quiet, his face like that of a pallbearer – complicit, and well-aware of the death that surrounds him. He presses his face to the horse’s neck and remains there for a moment, then moves back. Liquid brown eyes return his gaze. He offers a nauseous smile.

“It’s OK,” he says. “I’ll protect you.”

 

**v.**

“You alright, Magnus?”

It takes a moment to remember he’s being spoken to, seeing as it’s Taako, and Taako has never used his name, not once, to address him and ask him how he’s doing. It seems a little ridiculous, considering the situation at hand, but Magnus supposes he should appreciate it anyway. It’s just common courtesy, after all.

Probably, he thinks, it has something to do with the blood. And the pain. He’d never admit to it, but then again…

He lumbers over towards the nearest tree, sits down, and leans back against it. Taako follows. Merle stays where he is, hands clasped together, crouched in the dirt on his knees, waiting impatiently for some form of godly assistance. He cracks an eye open and glances sideways at the two of them.

“You guys OK?”

It’s gruff; more gruff than it needs to be. A father’s voice. Magnus closes his eyes, sighing as Taako flops down beside him, the soft silk of his hat bruising up against the one place where Magnus  _isn’t_ bruised. But at least the others are all right. OK. Whatever they might like to call it.

“He’s fine,” Taako says, just as Magnus’s eyes slip out of focus, head dropping downwards as the pain dulls and then redoubles. “He’s a fighter. It’s what he does.”

“Taako…” he begins, and fails to finish, because he can feel a second pain now, deep in his abdomen, and it hurts far more than one lucky arrow wound. But he has to ask. “Did he miss you? Are _you_ alright?”

Taako shoves at him – gently. “Fine,” he says, and his eyes flicker in the direction of Merle, now chanting softly under his breath. Magnus’s heart catches in his throat as Taako turns his head towards him, terrified that he’ll see the pain residing underneath. But he doesn’t seem to. Not quite. Taako’s lips crease into an uncertain smile – far, far too afraid of affection, Magnus thinks, for this kind of thing to ever happen again. But he hopes it will. Hopes he can continue to save them, after everything they’ve faced. They’re almost family, now.

“I suppose I’ll have to remember, next time, you taking an arrow on our behalf and all that,” Taako says, drawling just a little, like he doesn’t expect to be believed, “Humans. You’re so fucking stupid. I could’ve, like, totally crushed it. But you helped out anyway.” He blows out his cheeks. “You’re so fucking weird, y’know? But you especially, my dude. You act like you’ve got a hundred lives just waiting for you back there. Just waiting for you to regenerate. Makes you look kinda crazy, sometimes. Always rushing into everything.”

Magnus says nothing. It doesn’t seem appropriate, somehow. He’s always been the first one in. Leading the charge, desperate to overwhelm. But even so, a part of him thinks Taako might just be right. Because there are times when he really has felt invincible, as if there was ever the slightest chance of him coming back to life. Magnus, resurrected. Magnus, the eternal protector. He’s always been fond of the idea – or at least, he’s been fond as far back as he can remember. Most of his childhood remains a blur.

That old void is calling him again. Magnus banishes it to the back of his skull. He’s never been fond of reminiscing.

 

**vi.**

“No, but seriously, you’ll lose it all.”

Magnus’s heart, in that moment, shatters into a million pieces. He is the walking embodiment of a splintered sunset, all sharp lines and edges. He is all that, and he is also nothing. The sound of Taako’s voice is almost too much to bear.

“Is it the beard? Because I’ll draw a beard.”

Beside Taako, Merle chortles once and then descends into silence. His tenor is almost unreadable.

“I mean,” he begins, “we have already explained that you’re dead, you know? You got turned into ash! If they see you—”

But Magnus can’t stand it any longer. He can feel the words leaking from him, syllable after sordid syllable, as mangled as anything has ever been.

“I can’t feel _anything_. I – I’m not hungry, I don’t _breathe_ , my heart doesn’t beat. Do you – do you understand?”

An aching beat of silence. Finally, Taako says, “I do. I do. I understand where you’re coming from—”

“And that’s _me_! That’s me, right there.”

A more doubtful tone creeps into Taako’s voice. “Well, it’s _sorta_ you. It’s your _body_. I mean, is that really you?”

Something inside of him explodes. A small galaxy, one small supernova, combusting and collapsing into nothing, absorbing everything but his anger. Magnus opens his mouth to yell and hates that he can’t feel it.

“Those are the arms that have held my wife!” he says, and hates, because God, it’s been so long, much longer than anyone should be able to bear—

“I can’t fight,” he finds himself saying, “I can’t protect. I can’t do _anything_ in this body.”

And he can’t, Magnus thinks. He can’t love, can’t breathe, can’t feel anything except rage, flowing through his spirit like water during high tide, and every atom that might once have been his feels like it’s drowning. His heart, a thing now made purely of metaphor, is screaming with the pain of it. It’s difficult to keep those screams from entering his speech.

“I have worked all my life,” he continues, “to be able to fight, and protect, and do good, and I—”

Taako’s voice is as soft as he has ever heard it.

“It’s your call, man.”

 

**vii.**

It’s the end of the world. It’s the end of the world, and here he is, at the end of everything, clinging on to what he loves more than anything else: his friends. It boggles him still that he could ever forget them, that he could ever even consent to leaving them behind, without an ally, without a friend, without protection. Magnus has died so many times and he knows it now, knows what has forever inspired such recklessness. Magnus has lived a hundred years longer than he should have and knows his purpose instinctively; here are your tools, the voice says, here is your voice. Now use it, and help. Help everyone and anything in every world there is. Magnus, the protector.

Magnus knows his purpose, and his grievances. He will ask for help and offer it in equal measure.

The world stalls. The light of creation shimmers and bleeds, and Lucretia’s voice fills the void that stretches between them as their home world flickers into being.

“I can hold them off, just go!”

But Magnus is already shaking his head. He knows what his purpose is, what it has always been.

“I’m not going fucking anywhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are always appreciated! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] muscle memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14901053) by [ZoeBug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug)




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